


Width of a Circle

by Kleenexwoman



Category: Agent Pendergast Series - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Genre: Implied Incest, Magical Realism, Multi, david bowie references, familial guilt, making fun of new age people, misuse of kabbalah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleusinian mysteries. Towns full of psychic hucksters. Out-of-body experiences. Is it truly leading to some cosmic reckoning for Aloysius Pendergast and Viola Maskelene?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Keter to Malkuth

It is decades in the past. 

A man sits in a hotel room at the edge of the world and all of Western civilization. He is tall, pale, thin, and getting thinner. He watches the sun sink down into the Pacific. The dark waters lap against the shore, the coldness leaching into his soul. He has been alone in this room for days, his mind collapsing in on itself. 

Madness runs in his family. He thinks of his brother, trapped in a grey, dank asylum halfway across the world, already lost and yet safe--he can fall no further. He thought he had escaped that fate; he'd played with madness, flirted with it, invited it, danced along its beach. But he has been sinking into its quicksand for some time, and he can no longer pretend that the climb out will be easy. 

The alchemical wedding has four stages, a metaphor for the soul. He has been through the first stage, the blackening; he has accumulated a career, bad habits, broken hearts. Now is the time of purging. He has been stripping himself of everything that connects him to his past. Friends, collaborators, lovers. The fire of his madness is burning everything impure away, and what remains will be pure, white and clean, streamlined. 

And yet he's still in this morass, this confusion. He's drawn circles around himself and purified his body, he's meditated and starved, released his energy and gathered it back in. Nothing works. He sinks deeper. 

He paces the width of his circle, eyeing the glass coffee table, festooned with thin white lines of power. One more will do it, he thinks. He's almost at the edge, he can feel himself breaking through, he just needs that push. One more line of coke and he'll rise above it all, from malkuth to kether--he'll break through the crown of the sun and see his existence from above. It will make sense, and he'll descend victorious. 

The cocaine hits his brain and he's rocketing out of his body, blood streaming from his nose, knees buckling and mismatched eyes rolling up into his head. Gone. The stars above him invite him to lose himself in their sparkling depths, their glowing abysses, but his soul is still too crippled to reach them--he extends one astral hand to the sky in blessing, and then is gone. 

His spirit races over leylines. He needs a tether that is not his wracked body--any mind will do, any vessel. It is a station-to-station call and he does not care who answers, what magickal circle he interrupts, what body he possesses. 

He is expanding and contracting, all time a single coil, a gyre spinning slowly forever.

Decades in the future, there is a soul like his, with a bond of blood kin that has been lost to the generations, a bond of soul kin that is stronger--there is a man, lost, going through the same alchemical purging, looking over another ocean. His soul twinkles like the prettiest star, full of cold fire. 

They stand in a house that is infinite on the inside, lavishly furnished with memories. Corridors lead off into murky cellars where monsters prowl. Staircases fold in on each other, Escher diagrams of guilt and neurosis. They walk around each other, at cross-purposes, each soul trapped within his circle. 

Yes--the events that set this in motion have happened before, and they will happen again. There is the illusion of choice, but there was never any choice. The man trapped in the house in his mind could not have prevented what happened in the past and he cannot prevent what will happen in the future. They are swimming in this knowledge, drowning in it. 

Expanding and contracting, all time a single coil, a gyre spinning slowly forever. They are transported on the arms of a personal galaxy, a spiral-shaped universe demanding blood, madness, brother against brother. To stop this cycle is to stop the universe. 

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" the man trapped in the house inside his own mind asks. He is pale, half-ice and half-black, like some ancient goddess of death. "I've redeemed you in death, brother, haven't I? Isn't that better than nothing?" His spectre flickers, the house fading in and out, and the visitor realizes that he's leaving his body too, each cell saturated in something deathly. "I've lost everything," the man says. "My brother, my wife. All hope. I can never do any good again. I'm trapped. Death is the only release now." 

"You are purified," says the visitor. "Like me. You have a choice. Leave your body and take your chances in the next life, or try to redeem this one." 

Behind them, there is something pulsing, dark and red. This is no realm of demons, the visitor realizes. This is something for the man in the house alone, it is something vital. He raises a hand to point. "See what you leave behind," he says. "See what you can come back to." 

The man in the house turns to look. It must mean something important to him, because he turns and walks into the pulse. It brightens as he moves towards it, a flame that warms instead of burns. 

The Escher house is collapsing, and the visitor flees. 

He awakens in his hotel room in California, mismatched eyes snapping open as the rays of the east creep into his room, painting the walls electric blue. Sound and vision return, along with his sanity. Something wild and loose has gone from him, and there is something precise and cold in its place. 

Across decades, a man in a New York apartment wakes. The drugs have not numbed his senses; far from it, his normally acute perception has expanded. He can hear the roar and rumble of people and cars in the streets below, hear the Atlantic ocean lapping at the shores of the land, and hear the silent heartbeat of something dark and ancient sleeping beneath the waves. 

But he is alive, and has chosen to be.


	2. Corner of the Morning

In the cold light of day, it's easy to give the nights a rational explanation. Aloysius enters the house of his memories because it is a construct he's built over the years; his brain is used to seeing it when he closes his eyes. The three versions of Diogenes that dwell within can be reduced to Freudian analysis--id, ego, superego. 

The superego, he decides, is his sense of responsibility, his sense of guilt. That nagging need to right wrongs--not, as D'Agosta does, because he's a good person. It's to wipe out that original sin. Am I my brother's keeper? It is that memory, long repressed and yet still potent, that permeates his soul and shapes his psyche. He will never be able to exorcise it entirely, nor does he wish to. He fears that without it, he would have never struggled like he has--allowed himself to sink wholly into neurosis and debauchery. It's a question of balance. 

In the dream, he is as he is, adult and capable, but Diogenes is a child. He hears his brother's screams, his gulping and panting sobs, and runs through a labyrinth of illusion to find him. The sounds and shapes are terrifying at first, a phantasmagoria of horror, flashing through his perception too quickly to comprehend, but just slowly enough to register. But he knows them to be illusions, and his mastery over his mind renders them harmless. They are sound and vision, light and shadow, flashing across his eyes with no consequence. 

Diogenes is so thin and small and fearful, cowering in the corner, arm flung across his hazel eyes to stop the nightmare. "Aly," he begs, voice quavering, "Aly, help me. Make it stop. Please, Aly, make it stop..." His thin hand reaches out to the pistol hung on the wall, shivering, eyes wild with torment, and Aloysius counts the breaths before he reaches his brother. 

The boy puts the pistol to his head and squeezes his eyes shut, tears trickling down his cheeks, just as Aloysius reaches him. He knocks the gun away and it clatters to the floor, skittering safely out of reach. Diogenes clings to him immediately, face pressed into the safety of Aloysius's chest, sobbing his heart out. 

"Ssh," Aloysius says. He strokes his brother's scarlet hair, the thin frame of his back, expressing affection and tenderness in a way he never would have done when they were both children together. "Ssh, Diogenes. It's all right. I'm here. I'll protect you." 

A younger, brash Aloysius would have led Diogenes out by the hand, forcing his brother to confront the unreality of these illusions, to conquer his fears. But he is older, and besides, he is a father. He scoops up his brother and carries him outside to safety, to reality. Diogenes, like a more faithful Orpheus, never looks back. He doesn't open his eyes until his feet touch the ground, trusting his brother to carry him far away. 

There is a sense of relief, every time. Both eyes remain hazel. 

*

The id is...more difficult. 

He has never seen his brother with two blue eyes, and he isn't sure what it signifies. This is a teenaged Diogenes, lithe and deceptively baby-faced. As Aloysius draws nearer, he can see that his brother's body flickers, dances like flame. 

"Ah, Frater. Have you missed me?" A slender hand trails across his cheek, leaving lines of searing heat behind it. "Give your brother a kiss, Aloysius." Red, full lips press against his, a burst of warmth that fills his mouth and seeps down his throat. 

"You aren't my brother. Who are you?" Aloysius demands. 

Diogenes pouts. "Don't you recognize your own flesh and blood, Aly? Have you disowned me, wicked as I am?" 

"You aren't my brother. Who are you?" Aloysius balls his hands into fists, arms at his sides. He will not be moved. 

"But I am your brother, Aly." Two blue, cold eyes that sparkle with madness gaze into his, and two hands, warm like coals, press themselves softly into Aloysius's cheeks. "Don't you remember the fun we used to have? The games we used to play?" The lips move, the tongue moves, the teeth glisten. "We could have that again, just you and me. Forever." 

"You aren't my brother," Aloysius says, a third time. "Who are you?" 

Diogenes takes a step back. The withdrawal of the fire is sudden, and Aloysius feels a biting frost as his fingertips, the tip of his nose. "But, Aloysius..." Diogenes cocks his head. "I am your brother." The red lips curve to a wicked grin. "Who else would I be?" 

The question isn't rhetorical, not in this realm of seductive fire and burning frost. "The Agoyzen," Aloysius whispers. 

White teeth grin. "Like a virus," Diogenes says. "But it didn't infect me. It freed me. It never showed you anything that wasn't truly inside you, did it, Aly?" 

"It wasn't all me," Aloysius whispers. "It was inside me, but it wasn't me." 

Slender fingers tap on red lips. Diogenes's body is dissolving now, so slowly, into bright tongues of flame. "You pride yourself on knowing yourself," says the Diogenes of fire, "but you're so good at hiding the parts you don't like from yourself, and then forgetting they're there. You forgot what you did to me, locked it away forever--what else did you forget?" 

Aloysius opens his mouth to deny it, but the flames are too strong. They caress his tongue, fill his throat, sink into his stomach and consume his flesh. He is embraced from within and without by the creature that is Diogenes, held secure and warm in strong arms. The flames lap at his flesh like the tongue of a lover. His body crumbles into ash with the final ecstasy of an orgasm. 

He always awakens from this Diogenes bathed in sweat, disturbed and restless. 

*

He thinks of the first Diogenes he encountered in his mind as the safe Diogenes. The ego, combining desire and obligation safely, balancing them both. He has control over this Diogenes--he made him--

\--perhaps not. This Diogenes admits he is a construct, and yet Aloysius is increasingly unsure if he reflects Aloysius's own desires, or desires Aloysius believed Diogenes to have, or some kind of third reality, a parallel existence. Ego Diogenes slips Aloysius little snippets of a history they never had together, anecdotes and ruminations that seem as though they could be real, too vivid for Aloysius to imagine. 

"Do you remember when we visited Fiji?" he asks. "I spent three weeks trying to capture the sunset, the way the dying light danced across the edge of the world. You spent a week in someone's hut drinking kava kava with the men, trying to understand the appeal of it." 

"We never went to Fiji," Aloysius murmurs. "But we could have." 

"No," Diogenes muses, "we never did." He sits cross-legged, mirroring Aloysius's zazen position. "We could have. We grew up together. There were roles we were allowed to fill, and we did, to some extent. You were responsible, tasteful, rational. I was creative, somewhat flamboyant. Sensitive." He grows tired of the cross-legged pose, leans back on his elbows. "You protected me and pushed me. Mother and Father didn't understand me. You didn't want them to understand you." 

Aloysius closes his eyes and tries to summon a vision of Helen. An ideal Helen, trustworthy and adventurous. But here, in this place, his mind won't lie to him. It may hide the truth, but it won't lie. "Did we ever marry?" 

Diogenes emits a dignified snort. "Don't be ridiculous." He grins, his red lips an echo of fire that quickly fades away. "I would have never let you do such a thing." 

He straightens up, spine taut, mouth suddenly serious. "To business, my dear Aloysius. I know you came here to ask me a question." 

"I no longer remember what it was." Aloysius shrugs, suddenly not wishing to end their session of swapping fabricated memories. "It must have not been important." 

"Oh, Aly," Diogenes chides, "it was positively crucial. Here." He flips a card into Aloysius's lap. It is a tarot card, but of no arcana Aloysius recognizes--The Crone, a woman in black standing over a cauldron. When Aloysius flips over the card, there are words written on it, but his dream-mind catches the words and they shift before his eyes. 

When he wakes up, he holds a stiff, glossy card in his hand.


	3. The Moon Draws Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viola is in this chapter. Look, I have a short attention span.

The dream has been the same for a week. 

A procession up the side of a mountain, the air hot and thick, gritty with smoke and ash. The eye is drawn to the three figures at the front. One is an older woman, face drawn, streaks of grey in her hair. She wears the robes of a high priestess. One is a younger woman, dark-haired and big with child--but wearing the robes of a vestal virgin. Interesting. The third is a young man, naked but for a loincloth around his waist, hands wrapped with golden cord. He looks unhappy, but determined. The women following behind them are dressed in vestal robes as well, but are not as interesting--they seem to exist solely to tote up torches and bundles wrapped in cloth. 

The procession stops on a stone ledge, beyond it the spitting caldera of the volcano. The woman begins to speak. And this is how Viola knows it is not a normal dream--the language is not immediately comprehensible to her, but not gibberish. Having had the same dream for so many nights in a row, she's figured that it's a mixture of Koine Greek and Etruscan, perhaps some ancient tongue or odd regional patois. She can make out a few distinct words--"father" and "sacrifice" and "fire," but not much else. 

The emotional weight of the scenario is obvious from the way the vestal virgin holds the man's arm, the way the high priestess touches the vestal virgin's shoulder. The high priestess is her mother, the man the father of the child the vestal virgin carries. They are all sorrowful, but resigned. 

The high priestess puts a hand on the swollen belly of her daughter and switches tone, her words become high and singsong. The vestal virgin bows her head, tears running down her cheeks. 

The man closes his eyes and falls backwards into the fire. 

*

Viola wakes up in a hot sweat, trying hard to focus on the dream, her mind running over the details. She has notes on her bedside table, scribbled notes about the dream, more carefully written notes taken from dry papers on ancient rituals. She's been scouring Frazer's "The Golden Bough" all week. Better to let her mind chase a theory, get her away from herself. 

The ritual certainly seems to follow along familiar lines, similar in spirit to the Corn King rituals or the succession of the priests of Diana. The sacrificial king, body given to the earth as tribute after he's done his duty. The part of the vestal virgin could be something more akin to the rites of Isis or Astarte, some pre-Christian paradox of divine motherhood. 

Her mind is too unsettled to think on it now, and the light of the full moon shining through the window is distracting. She wraps the linen bedsheet around herself and goes to splash her face, avoiding the mirror. She cannot look herself in the eyes anymore, for fear of seeing nothing there. 

She had been taken apart, that was all--no, not taken apart, merely uncovered. The illusion she had built around herself had been stripped away, and she had been left with nothing but the vague sense of a grotesque parody of herself. She had spent the next few weeks trying to regain herself, with no luck. What would Viola Maskelene do? What would she say? It had taken effort, effort that she had concealed but effort all the same. And now that she no longer had anyone to speak to, anyone to impress, she was utterly lost. 

She suspected that the real Viola was a small, plain, frightened child who wanted very much to be loved--a child who had tried very very hard to live up to the expectations of her parents, her peerage, her "friends" at school, and who had thrown it all away in disgust when it hadn't satisfied anyone. The Viola she had created for herself had gotten close. A sense of adventure, of curiosity, a desire to connect with the earth, to understand people, to love them and be desired... 

...but she hadn't had sex in months. Even the vacation she'd taken with Aloysius had been nearly platonic, two weeks of hand-holding, kisses that never made it past her neckline. On the second night in, she had melted in his arms, an attempt at a seduction that had turned her into a sobbing mass of fear. He had held her and said nothing, merely understanding. It had been what she needed, but not what she wanted. She had felt that she was being created anew, brought to life by someone who truly understood her, but perhaps it had only been a new illusion to squeeze herself into. 

In any case, they were just friends now, and that had been that. The seed of herself that had been brought to life with the suggestion of his love was frozen, and perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps, sequestering herself on Capraia, she could begin to build herself some real. 

Or perhaps, she thought darkly, she was a perfect empty vessel. Perhaps what would fill her up wasn't her. Was something old, something--

\--but the moonlight banished the thought from her mind, turned the soft white rays into a rainbow, light through a cracked crystal prism. 

Her dark hair swept the paper as she bent over to write in Greek.


	4. Lilydale, NY pt. I

The town of Lilydale, New York wasn't quite what D'Agosta had been expecting. From Pendergast's description of the burg as "the spiritualist capital of the world," he'd been imagining a place full of old cemeteries, Addams Family-style haunted houses, misty groves with standing stones, maybe even a wicker man being built by some fish-faced natives. (Hanging out with Pendergast, he thought, had definitely helped to broaden his imagination--if you'd asked him to picture a haunted house ten years ago, he'd have imagined a tract duplex with chairs stacked inexplicably on the kitchen table.) 

But it looked like any other tourist town. Lots of sedate Victorian houses with overgrown gardens, lots of little shops with wooden fretwork blossoming from the bricks, and an inexplicable gravel field with a gigantic tree stump in it that Pendergast assured him was "quite the tourist attraction." D'Agosta didn't get it, but he also wasn't entirely sure why Pendergast had dragged him there anyway. He'd have heard about a murder. 

They'd been to five different psychics just that morning. One Reiki worker, who had informed D'Agosta that his heart chakra was seriously misaligned ("Yeah, I got shot," he had informed her, and apparently that hadn't been the cause of the issue but she had been unable to tell him what had), one woman who claimed to be able to channel the dead (D'Agosta had walked out when she'd pretended to channel his Nonna--she had been speaking Italian, yes, but not the Neapolitan dialect that his Nonna knew. He had been willing to sit through a certain amount of bullshit for Pendergast, but he wasn't going to stand for that), one tarot reader who had argued for a half hour with Pendergast about the precise significance of the "Death" card ("It just means change! That's all!" she'd cried, and he'd nodded calmly and agreed that yes, being dead was certainly a change from being alive), one guy with complex mandalas all over his wall (Pendergast had stepped into that shopfront and immediately stepped out again, his face pale, and had refused to explain to D'Agosta why), and one self-described shaman who had tried to give Pendergast a backrub and then offered to sell them psychedelic mushrooms (D'Agosta generally didn't like drug busts when the perpetrators were clearly just harmless hippies, but he'd sort of wanted to arrest the guy for sleazing up on Pendergast). 

In general, D'Agosta thought, the day had been a bust, whatever Pendergast was trying to get out of it. Well...maybe not such a bad day. They had stopped for lunch at a cafe called the Treehouse, a big blue brick building that sold smoothies, vegan sandwiches, herbs in bulk, crystals, and books by someone named Wilhelm Reich. D'Agosta had wished for a chili cheeseburger, but nut-and-bean-sprout lettuce wraps fit into the diet he was on more easily than that did. He had to admit, with enough tomato and garlic spread, they weren't too bad. Sort of refreshing. 

He folded up the last bit of lettuce into an envelope and shoved it all into his mouth before it could slop out onto his fingers. "So," he asked Pendergast, who was picking at a gigantic bowl of spring mix, "why are we here, anyway?" 

Pendergast leaned back in his chair. "It's a nice day," he said. "I thought we might drive upstate and take in some spiritual enlightenment." 

D'Agosta raised an eyebrow. "I'd rather take in a Mets game, but whatever." 

"Perhaps next weekend," Pendergast said mildly, and shoved a forkful of greens into his mouth. 

"I mean," D'Agosta continued, "you can't tell me we're not here for a reason." 

"Mmm." Pendergast chewed meditatively, and swallowed decisively. "Vincent, you are not a particularly spiritual man, are you?" 

"You know I'm not," D'Agosta said. "Laura does church. I don't anymore." 

"Thousands of people go to church and never give a thought to anything beyond it," Pendergast said. 

"Right," D'Agosta said. "So what do you mean?" 

"Realms beyond the physical," Pendergast said. "The purification of the soul. Dharma, karma, the true path. Metaphysics. The will of the gods. Spirits and saints." 

"Saints," D'Agosta said. "Saints, I do. When I joined the force, my Nonna gave me this medal of Saint Michael--saint of cops, right hand of God. Kept it in my wallet for years." Pendergast regarded him with cool interest, and D'Agosta pressed on. "Seems to work OK, mostly--I'm not dead, despite hanging out with you all the time." 

"Thanks to the archangel Michael, of course," Pendergast said. He propped up his chin on his hand. "Do you pray much?" 

"Sure. 'Oh God, let me get out of this fucking mess alive.' Stuff like that." 

"I hardly believe that counts, Vincent." 

"It doesn't? It's sure as hell sincere." 

"I believe there's a common saying about the scarcity of atheists in foxholes." 

"Fine. So I'm spiritual when there's a gun pointed at me." D'Agosta pushed his plate away and considered. "I used to go to church. Mostly for my Nonna. When she died, I went and lit candles for her. I guess I go every once in a while if I miss her." 

"What do you get out of that?" Pendergast asked softly. 

D'Agosta shrugged. "I remember her. I feel like she'd approve. She was pretty religious. Had all these saints candles burning all over the house. She was real big on the saints. You know how Catholics are." 

"I do indeed," Pendergast agreed. "I was raised as such." 

"I should have guessed," D'Agosta said. "Nobody who wasn't named after a saint--" But he was interrupted by Aloysius shaking his head. "You weren't named after a saint?" 

Aloysius crooked his lips in a small smile. "The saint of students and plague victims? Not grand enough. I was named after my maternal uncle's teddy bear." He pushed his salad around his bowl, then looked up again. "Am I given to understand, then, that you no longer regard yourself as Catholic?" 

D'Agosta shrugged. "I haven't been to church for years. Laura asked me if I wanted a Catholic wedding, I told her we could get married in a casino in Vegas for all I cared. It's not like I've been excommunicated or anything, but...I guess the term is 'lapsed'." 

"I suppose I haven't been to church for at least as long as you," Aloysius mused, "yet I still think of myself as Catholic. I suppose it can't be helped." 

D'Agosta raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? That Zen garden and the voodoo priest you hang around with, that's all pretty Catholic." 

"Voudon is a syncretic religion based on a creole of African gods and Catholic saints," Aloysius informed him stiffly, "and many adherents consider themselves very strongly Catholic. As for the Buddhist accoutrements--they offer a peace of mind the rosary and the sacraments cannot. Although I suppose that without a certain amount of moral guilt..." He trailed off, staring at the half-full plate of greens before him. 

"Maybe that's why you'd call yourself Catholic and I wouldn't," D'Agosta said. 

"Mmm?" Pendergast blinked. 

"Guilt," D'Agosta said. 

"Yes? What of it?" Pendergast's attention was suddenly, blazingly on him. 

"Nothing." D'Agosta wished he had more food to dig into, just to create a diversion. Why had he said that, about guilt? "Nothing. I was just saying things. But no, I wouldn't consider myself spiritual. All that purification of the soul stuff--I don't think you can get it in a church." 

"I hope you won't be offended," Pendergast said, "if I told you that that was why I chose you to accompany me." 

D'Agosta shook his head. "Fine with me." 

"I find myself becoming more...preoccupied," Pendergast said, "with the supernal. The uncanny. And I fear that it's an attribution error--I'm merely allowing myself to imagine it, to think magically instead of rationally. My dear Vincent, you are not the most learned or lofty of men, but you flatly refuse to see things that aren't there--and I need that quality of yours today." 

D'Agosta considered this, and then began to laugh. "So you dragged me up here to be your own personal Ghostbuster." 

Pendergast looked wounded. "I simply meant to say that you're a very grounding presence."


	5. Lilydale, NY pt. II

The Silver Wraith rattled down a dusty dirt path as they crossed the city limits of Lilydale. D'Agosta peered at the fields surrounding them. "This isn't the way we came." 

"We are making one more stop on our journey of enlightenment, Vincent," said Pendergast mildly. As he spoke, the engine of the Wraith hummed smoothly to a stop, and the lights on the dashboard blinked off. There was no rattle, no whine, just the sudden cessation of everything electronic or mechanical in the vehicle. 

The two men sat in the car for a moment, each silently contemplating the situation. 

"I'll call Triple-A," said D'Agosta at precisely the same moment Pendergast said, "I suppose this is our stop." 

D'Agosta gave Pendergast a slightly baleful look and dug in his pocket for his iPhone. 

"I wouldn't do that." Pendergast got out of the car, motioning for D'Agosta to do the same. "I'm sure the Wraith will be safe here, and whatever malfunction it has suffered will have fixed itself by the time we are back. In the meantime, Madame Belanger awaits." He gestured towards a small clump of trees that sat in the middle of the grassy field. 

D'Agosta slipped his iPhone into his pocket and held up his hands. "You know what? You're right. This is your car, and it's your day trip. If you're not worried, I'm not worried. I'm just going to enjoy the country air." 

Pendergast quirked an eyebrow. D'Agosta decided not to tell him that when he did that, he always reminded D'Agosta of Mr. Spock about to deliver some kind of scathing joke about illogical humans. He didn't know if Pendergast even knew who Mr. Spock was. "Are you beginning to resent my invitation, Vincent? This is certainly not the most dangerous situation we've ever been in together." 

"Fake psychics get on my nerves," D'Agosta said. Pendergast began to stride towards the clump of trees, and D'Agosta broke into a slow trot to keep up. "You know, this stuff is still technically illegal in New York." 

"An interesting fact, Vincent, and one that might prove relevant." 

"That shaman guy. 'Chemognosis' my ass, he's a pusher." 

"You know, Nora Kelly and Margo Greene recently co-wrote a paper on the centrality of psychedelic cacti to the Huichol culture of Mexico that might prove enlightening to you." 

"Yeah, well, I don't think 'Andy Wotanspear' is a Huichol." 

"One never knows." Pendergast put out a hand to stop D'Agosta in his tracks. "Do those trees look farther away than when we started?" 

D'Agosta squinted at the trees. "Not really, but I wasn't paying that much attention to measuring them." He watched Pendergast step forward and back, moving his fingers in front of his eyes and measuring out increments of space with his long, spidery fingers. "They look like we could walk to them in a few minutes. No big deal." 

"They seem impossibly far away to me," Pendergast said. He blinked rapidly. "But you don't seem to think so." To D'Agosta's astonishment, he covered his eyes with his left hand, reaching out delicately with his right. "Would you indulge me, Vincent, and lead me to them?" 

D'Agosta chewed on his lip, weighing his options. He could get back in the car and try to call AAA, like he'd planned. He could start walking back towards the town and leave Pendergast with his weird conviction that the clump of trees was enchanted. Or he could lead him a quarter of a mile over reasonably rough terrain and risk letting him sprain his own goddamn ankle. This wasn't, as Pendergast had pointed out, even remotely the weirdest or most dangerous situation they'd ever been in. It definitely wasn't the craziest he'd ever seen Pendergast. But there was something deeply unsettling about Pendergast's blue eyes meeting his own with this kind of trepidation over a stalled car and a clump of trees. 

"All right." D'Agosta reached out to Pendergast, clasing his friend's slim hand in his own. "Come on, now." 

He watched Pendergast's feet as they moved towards the trees, although those carefully made shoes never seemed to step in a gopher hole or trip over a mound. Pendergast held his hand and followed his gait like a child, thoroughly trusting. It was hard to know how much Pendergast might trust anyone these days, especially after he'd barely forgiven D'Agosta for what he saw as a betrayal of his trust while he was...D'Agosta tried not to think about it. He was concerned for Pendergast, probably more than he'd ever let on to anyone, and he wasn't sure whether he'd agreed to come on this trip in the first place to spend an interesting day with his friend or to humor him. 

"You doing okay?" he asked Pendergast. "We're almost there." 

Pendergast dropped his hand from over his face and blinked. "We are, indeed." 

They stood on the edge of a wood, and although the clump of trees had seemed small and manageable from the road, now it was as though they stretched in all directions. D'Agosta told himself that it had to be an optical illusion, that being face-to-face with a tree would definitely give you a whole lot of tree to look at. And wasn't the day outside bright and brassy, the sun's rays golden everywhere, but the light filtering down from the trees inside muted and blue? 

"The way is clear," Pendergast murmured to himself, "the light is good. I have no fear--nor no one should. The woods are just trees, the trees are just wood..." 

D'Agosta glanced at him. "That Shakespeare?" 

"No, Sondheim." Pendergast straightened his tie. "Shall we?" 

And they entered, side by side. 

*

Once inside, the woods were significantly more inviting. The light filtering down from the leaves was calming and pretty instead of murky, and the air smelled fresh and clean. D'Agosta stopped for a moment, gazing up at the trees, and began to whistle. He glanced over at Pendergast, who was frowning at the trees with intense concentration. 

"Would you mind telling me what you see, Vincent?" He pointed to a patch of woods directly in front of them. 

D'Agosta took a moment to let the sight sink in. "A hell of a lot of eyeballs." 

Fortunately, none of them--as far as D'Agosta could tell--were real. But the trees were festooned with eye ornaments. There were blown-glass evil eye sigils in different shades of blue, sharp stained-glass shards painted with Renaissance eyes, laminated diagrams of the interior of an eyeball torn from anatomy textbooks and duct-taped onto branches, strings and garlands of cheap plastic eyeballs, blobbily painted cartoon eyes on plywood and ping-pong balls hung on thin ribbons. There were even sets of carefully sculpted clay eyes that seemed to have been sunk into the trunks of trees. 

D'Agosta regarded the melange of eyes. "It's kind of pretty." 

"You don't find it unnerving?" 

D'Agosta shrugged. "If I thought about what it might mean? Sure. Maybe there's a serial killer who collects eyeballs as a trophy, or..." But his mind shied away from the possibility. Why think of such disgusting things on such a beautiful day, when he was on such an interesting trip with his dearest friend? Why think of anything unpleasant, scary, or dangerous? These woods could never be dangerous. "Maybe someone just likes the ways eyes look," he offered. 

"What an interesting conclusion to come to," Pendergast murmured. "You haven't felt different since we entered these woods, have you?" 

"Why?" 

"You were terribly irritable earlier. Just a few minutes ago, in fact. And now, you are actually whistling. Off-key," he added pointedly, "not that it matters. Such sudden mood swings aren't quite like you." 

"Hey, I agreed to be your guide dog today--you don't get to criticize my whistling. Anyway, I like the woods. When I was up in Canada I'd go out in the forest with a notebook and write all day." 

"How pastoral of you. At any rate, I would recommend you cease that noise. It could attract unwanted attention." 

The woods seemed to be leading them in circles. The longer they walked, the more familiar each assemblage of tree and eye seemed. 

"How do we keep taking different directions and ending up in the same place?" D'Agosta sat on a stump. "We've been walking for an hour, at least. If you had an appointment with Madame Belanger, we missed it." 

"I doubt very much that she'll be swamped with other clients." Pendergast searched his pockets. "I ought to have brought a lodestone." 

"So let's get out of here, if we even can, and go get one. And maybe a beer." 

"I'm not ready to give up yet. I came to get Madame Belanger's advice, and get it I shall. I swear that I mean her no harm." Pendergast addressed this last comment to what seemed to be the woods at large. 

Something rubbed against D'Agosta's leg. He looked down to see a small black cat with a white bib and four white paws rubbing against him. "Well, hello there." D'Agosta put out his hand so the cat could sniff it. "Where'd you come from?" 

"Be careful, Vincent. It may have fleas, and I have no desire to watch you itch the whole way back." 

"I'm not real worried." D'Agosta noticed a look of mild distaste on Pendergast's face. "You don't like cats?" 

"I find them uncommunicative, aloof, and prone to neurosis." 

"So, nothing like you at all, then." 

"I also don't relish mange." 

"Are you calling this little guy mangy?" D'Agosta stroked the cat under its chin. It closed its eyes in bliss. 

"It only takes one experience to make one conscious of the potential." 

"I think he's fine." The cat jumped up into D'Agosta's lap and settled there. "I like cats. You just have to be patient and let them get to know you on their own terms." 

"I rarely have that kind of patience." 

"Mrow," said the cat. It uncurled itself from D'Agosta's lap and leapt onto the forest floor, then trotted down a small side path. As soon as it was several yards away, it stopped and looked back at the two men. "Mrow," it said insistently. 

D'Agosta stood up and brushed his pants off. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm following the cat." 

"Do you really think that's the wisest course of action?" 

"Beats walking in circles for the rest of the afternoon." 

Pendergast looked doubtful. D'Agosta sighed. "It's simple deduction, alright? The cat's friendly, it wanted to interact with me and be petted. Therefore, it's not feral, therefore it's someone's pet. It probably knows its way around here pretty well, and it's going to go back home eventually. So we follow it to civilization." Pendergast said nothing, but looked skeptical. "What, you have a better plan?" 

"Admittedly, not one as simple. I suppose it's worth a try. It would be difficult to become more lost than we already are."


End file.
